Automsvc Project Home

Introduction

Automsvc is intended for developers of cross-platform projects. It provides command-line creation and manipulation of Microsoft Visual C++ DSP (project) and DSW (workspace) files.

Additionally, automsvc can generate DSP and DSW files automatically based on existing make systems.

The program is written in perl with care taken so that it can be used on both win32 platforms and linux. Included are several sample templates, which can be used to create project files of various types, such as dynamic or static libraries, console applications, and win32-gui applications. Also included are sample Makefiles showing how automsvc can be integrated with automake and other make systems.

Motivation

Automsvc grew out of frustrations in compiling and developing a cross-platform application (linux and win32). Common approaches to build-management for such a project would be to either:

1. use Makefiles on linux and on win32 with the help of cygwin and gnu make tools
2. use Makefiles carefully coded to work under both win32 and linux
3. use Makefiles on linux and a separate set of NMake files for win32
4. use Makefiles on nlinux and a separate set of MSVC project and workspace files

Options (3) and (4) present numerous problems, especially when trying to keep the (usually neglected) msvc project files in sync with the makefiles.

Option (2) requires time and effort, and does not mesh with existing tools (namely automake and autoconf).

Option (1) is great, except for several reasons. For example:

• Often, one would like to use the native cl.exe and link.exe programs on win32, which may not entirely cooperate with build tools such as automake and autoconf.
• Developers on win32 will often resort to creating their own personal msvc project anyway. This leads back to synchronization problems, especially since developers using their own personal project files are less motivated to keep the Makefiles up to date, and the Makefile maintainers are not very likely to inform the msdev people of configuration changes. Not to mention the fact that these haphazardly created project files are likely to be mis-configured.

A Brief History

The initial code base was the msvcgen.pl script written by Eric Sunshine (sunshine@sunshineco.com) as part of the Crystal Space project. This initial script was revised, reorganized, and extended by Kevin Walsh (kwalsh@users.sourceforge.net).

A complete rewrite was then done, encapsulating and refining the entire functionality of the previous attempt. This rewrite presented a much cleaner and organized interface, and should be considered the initial version of automsvc.

Contributions

Anyone who would like to help expand, refine, debug, etc., is invited to contribute. The current maintainer is Kevin Walsh (kwalsh@users.sourceforge.net).

Obtaining automsvc

Automsvc is maintained on SourceForge.